Post by Big Bunny on Feb 1, 2012 0:29:11 GMT -5

Classified document is said to warn that Pakistan is plotting to help reinstall Taliban once Nato-led forces depart

* Reuters * guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 February 2012 03.39 GMT

A Taliban fighter loyal to Jalaluddin Haqqani - The Taliban have secured Pakistan's support for a return to power in Afghanistan as well as toning down their severe brand of Islamism, according to reports citing a leaked US military assessment. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

The Taliban, backed by Pakistan, are set to retake control of Afghanistan after Nato-led forces withdraw from the country, according to reports citing a classifed assessment by US forces.

The Times described the report as secret and "highly classified", saying it was put together by the US military at Bagram air base in Afghanistan for top Nato officers last month. The BBC also carried a report on the leaked document.

"Many Afghans are already bracing themselves for an eventual return of the Taliban," the report was quoted as saying. "Once Isaf (Nato-led forces) is no longer a factor, Taliban consider their victory inevitable."

The document stated that Pakistan's security agency was helping the Taliban in directing attacks against foreign forces – a charge long denied by Islamabad.

The findings were based on interrogations of more than 4,000 Taliban and al-Qaida detainees, the Times said, adding the document was scarce on identifying individual insurgents.

A US state department spokesman and Britain's Foreign Office both declined comment on the report. Nato and Pakistani officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

Despite the presence of more than 100,000 foreign troops, the UN has said violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted by US-backed forces in 2001.

The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) says levels of violence are falling.

Citing the same report, the BBC reported on its website that Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency knew the locations of senior Taliban leaders and supported the expulsion of "foreign invaders from Afghanistan".

"Senior Taliban leaders meet regularly with ISI personnel, who advise on strategy and relay any pertinent concerns of the government of Pakistan."

The Times said the document suggested the Taliban were gaining in popularity, partly because the severe Islamist movement was becoming more tolerant.

The report was quoted as stating: "It remains to be seen whether a revitalised, more progressive Taliban will endure if they continue to gain power and popularity. Regardless, at least within the Taliban the refurbished image is already having a positive effect on morale."

Post by Big Bunny on Feb 21, 2012 9:17:29 GMT -5

U.S. Super-Sizing Afghan Jail It Promised to Abandon

* By Spencer Ackerman * February 20, 2012

There once was a plan to turn over the main U.S. detention center in Afghanistan to control of the Afghans in 2011. That’s out the window. Instead, the military is offering millions to vastly expand the center’s inmate intake.

Specifically, $35 million will fund expansions necessary to house “approximately 2,000 detainees” at the Detention Facility at Parwan on the outskirts of Bagram Air Field, an hour’s drive from Kabul. The Army Corps of Engineers wants to expand “detainee housing, guard towers, administrative facility and Vehicle/Personnel Access Control Gates, security surveillance and restricted access systems,” according to a recent solicitation. A Turkey-based company received the contract in late January.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. As far back as summer 2010, senior military officials in charge of the detention center boasted to Danger Room outright that by January 2012, they wouldn’t be running the square-mile sized prison. They considered handing the detention center to the Afghans a mark of their own success at fostering a culture of law and order within the Afghan government.

Alas. A year later, the command in charge of the detention center, Joint Task Force-435, admitted that it wouldn’t complete the handoff until the U.S. ended combat in 2014. The reason? “The Afghans don’t have the legal framework or the capacity to deal with violence being inflicted on the country by the insurgency,” an official told the Financial Times.

But the expansion is only going to increase the caseload the Afghans will eventually deal with. This is no minor refurbishment. The Detention Facility at Parwan held 1,000 inmates in August 2010. The $35 million expansion will prepare it to double the detainee population.

That should underscore the amount of fighting still to come in Afghanistan ahead of 2012. Even though much of the U.S. military views Afghanistan as a war with an expiration date — as I learned during a brief trip to Fort Leavenworth, Kan. yesterday, where soldiers referred to the war in the past tense — there will still be 68,000 troops there by summer’s end, and it’s not clear how many troops will leave Afghanistan by 2014.

Nor will 2014 mark the end of the war. The U.S. wants a residual military presence in Afghanistan, keeping troops on bases run by Afghans, as an insurance policy against the country falling apart and to stage the shadow war in Pakistan. The war will become heavy on Special Operations Forces in lieu of conventional troops — and human rights workers allege that the commandos run an unacknowledged torture facility at Parwan.

Even if they don’t, there are few who believe the Afghanistan War is on the cusp of ending, even if the U.S. will — slowly, incompletely — cease waging it. Where there’s war, there’s wartime detentions. And Parwan isn’t the only detention center on the grow: the U.S. is spending up to $100 million building jails across Afghanistan.

Post by Big Bunny on Feb 24, 2012 6:45:01 GMT -5

Military Burned Korans At Giant Afghanistan Jail

* By Spencer Ackerman * February 21, 2012

It’s bad enough that the U.S. military burned — it says accidentally — Korans in Afghanistan. But if that symbolism wasn’t already a setback to the war effort, the NATO command in Afghanistan confirms that the destruction of an unknown number of holy Islamic books occurred at the military’s massive wartime prison.

The Detention Facility at Parwan, the prison on the outskirts of Bagram Air Field was the locale for the recent Koran destructions, according to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Afghans and human rights workers already accuse the U.S. of hosting a secret torture chamber at the Parwan jail, a charge the U.S. denies.

“We can tell you for now these were religious materials that were gathered up at the Detention Facility in Parwan and it was inadvertently given to troops for burning,” emails Australian Navy Lt. L.M. Rago, an ISAF spokeswoman. “How and why this happened is part of the investigation that General Allen quickly directed this morning.”

Gen. John Allen, the commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan, issued a statement early Tuesday morning apologizing for the destruction of the Korans. “We are thoroughly investigating the incident and we are taking steps to ensure this does not ever happen again,” Allen said. “I assure you … I promise you … this was NOT intentional in any way.”

The account from the U.S. military so far is that Korans and other Islamic religious material were accidentally included in boxes of random material like furniture slated for destruction at a “burn pit” — fire pits for the incineration of refuse — at Bagram. Afghan employees of the base alerted military officials that the Korans were headed for the fire, pausing the incineration. It’s unclear why holy books were included in the piles of trash headed for the burn pit, but ISAF says it was a mix-up it’ll fix.

But the story already circulated far enough throughout Afghanistan that crowds threw stones on the outskirts of one of the entrance checkpoints to the big Bagram base, about an hour’s drive from Kabul. Judging from the photos of the riots, the angry crowds weren’t actually near the populated parts of the base.

After 10 years of war, it’s mystifying how Korans would have been anywhere near a destruction pit. Afghans rioted in Mazar-e-Sharif last year when a Florida pastor set the Islamic holy book ablaze, and did the same years ago after a Newsweek report of Koran desecrations at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Now a different detention center, this time on Afghan soil, hosted the desecration, however inadvertent it may have been. Afghan President Hamid Karzai already wants the coalition to turn over the Parwan jail to Afghan control, as the U.S. once promised to do by January 2012 — before it decided to keep Parwan for itself, and double the jail’s population. Allen has invited Karzai’s deputies to take part in the Koran investigation — possibly out of a recognition that the Afghans won’t host the U.S. if troops keep burning their holy books, especially at their wartime jails.

Update, 8:45 a.m., February 22: Gen. Allen has ordered that all troops in Afghanistan undergo re-training in how to handle Islamic religious materials by March 3. How are they supposed to handle the Koran? “In summary, all ISAF personnel are to comply with Islamic law when handling Islamic religious materials,” Lt. Rago emails.

Post by Big Bunny on Feb 26, 2012 15:36:26 GMT -5

US advisers shot in Afghanistan 'mocked protests over burning of Koran'

* From: NewsCore * February 27, 2012 4:37AM

TWO US advisers who were shot dead in the Afghan interior ministry by a colleague had been mocking anti-American protests over the burning of the Koran, a government source has said.

The description of events behind the withdrawal of all NATO government advisers came as police said a protester was killed and seven US soldiers were wounded in a grenade attack on their base in a sixth day of anti-American protests.

"The advisers were scolding the protesters and calling them bad names", as they watched videos of demonstrations in Kabul, the source said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

"They called the Koran a bad book in the presence of the guy. After all this the guy had verbal arguments with the advisers and was threatened by them. He gets angry and shoots them. Eight rounds were fired at them.

"He then sneaks out and disappears. No one knew about the incident for more than an hour because the room is soundproofed."

Asked about the account of events, a spokesman for NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said: "The investigation is ongoing."

Government sources said police were hunting for an Afghan intelligence official suspected of killing the two Americans, while the interior ministry confirmed that "the suspect is one of the employees of the ministry and he is at large".

Local television quoted a source which named the suspect as 25-year-old Abdul Saboor, who had studied in Pakistan and joined the ministry as a driver in 2007 before being promoted.

The attack came amid anti-US protests over the burning of Korans in an incinerator pit at the Bagram airbase. Taliban insurgents have called on Afghans to kill foreign troops in revenge for the incident, and claimed to have been behind the shooting deaths of the two US advisers.

NATO, which has a 130,000-strong US-led military force fighting the Taliban insurgency, has advisers throughout the Afghan government but commanding officer General John Allen ordered them all to be withdrawn.

"Despite being pulled from the ministries, the military advisers remained in contact with ministry personnel," ISAF spokesman Lt Col Jimmie Cummings said.

"We will not let this incident divide the coalition," he said on ISAF's Twitter feed.

But analysts said it had plunged relations between Afghans and their Western allies to an all time low.

Post by Big Bunny on Mar 5, 2012 18:42:54 GMT -5

US defends 'targeted killing' of citizens

Updated March 06, 2012 10:18:20

The Obama administration has asserted a right to kill Americans overseas who are plotting attacks against the United States, laying out specific details for the first time about a policy that critics argue violates US and international law.

Attorney-general Eric Holder said Americans who have joined Al Qaeda or its affiliates can be targeted for lethal strikes if there is an imminent threat to the US and capturing them is not feasible.

He made the remarks in a prepared speech but did not refer directly to the CIA drone strike last year that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born Muslim cleric who joined Al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate and directed many attacks.

"Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack," he said.

"In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force."

Mr Holder said there were circumstances under which "an operation using lethal force in a foreign country, targeted against a US citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces, and who is actively engaged in planning to kill Americans, would be lawful".

He said such circumstances included that a thorough review had determined the individual posed "an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States" and that "capture is not feasible".

Thirdly, he said the operation would be governed by the law of war, including ensuring the target was of military value and that steps were taken to limit collateral damage.

"Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen - even one intent on murdering Americans and who has become an operational leader of Al Qaeda in a foreign land - is among the gravest that government leaders can face," he said.

"The American people can be - and deserve to be - assured that actions taken in their defence are consistent with their values and their laws."

Licence to kill?

Civil liberties groups have decried the program as effectively a green light to assassinate Americans without due process in the courts under the US Constitution, a charge that Mr Holder flatly rejected.

He said court approval for such strikes was unnecessary, adding "the president may use force abroad against a senior operational leader of a foreign terrorist organisation with which the United States is at war - even if that individual happens to be a US citizen".

President Barack Obama and his aides have fiercely defended their stand on national security in the face of criticism from Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail that terrorism suspects are treated too leniently.

The targeted killing program raises profound legal and moral questions that should be subjected to public debate, and constitutional questions that should be considered by the judiciary. Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project

A US official said there was fierce debate within the administration about whether Mr Holder should give the speech, questioning if it would assuage or irritate Mr Obama's liberal backers, who have been concerned that his policies were too close to that of his predecessor George W Bush.

"The targeted killing program raises profound legal and moral questions that should be subjected to public debate, and constitutional questions that should be considered by the judiciary," said Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project.

A photo of a US RQ-170 sentinel drone, thought to be made by Lockheed Martin. America's use of drones to carry out strikes has sparked controversy on many occasions (http://aerowiki.blogspot.com/)

The US has launched numerous strikes against Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan using drones, unmanned aerial vehicles that at times have killed and wounded civilians in addition to the intended target, provoking an outcry.

A UN special investigator in 2010 called on the US to halt CIA drone strikes, though UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has avoided a direct condemnation and said it was up to governments and military authorities to decide.

Mr Holder said the administration abides by "robust oversight" when targeting Americans abroad, informing senior politicians about its counterterrorism operations.

Like the Bush administration, Mr Holder asserted that conducting counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their affiliates was the purview of the presidency, citing 2001 congressional authorisation.

He said the president has constitutional responsibilities to protect and defend the country.

"Military and civilian officials must often make real-time decisions that balance the need to act, the existence of alternative options, the possibility of collateral damage, and other judgments," he said.

Post by Big Bunny on Mar 18, 2012 1:27:01 GMT -5

The bloody saga of Robert Bales: a morality story for a nation at war for a decadePhilip SherwellMarch 18, 2012 - 11:29AM

Robert Bales turned his back on civilian life as a financial adviser in Ohio and signed up for the military after the September 11 attacks on the US.

He was a popular combat veteran, twice injured in Iraq, described by a former platoon leader as "one of the best soldiers I ever worked with" and who prided himself on identifying "the bad guys from non-combatants".

Now, though, he has been identified as the US soldier accused of last Sunday's massacre of 16 Afghan villagers, nine of them children, in a pre-dawn shooting and stabbing rampage.

The atrocity has plunged US-Afghan relations to a new low, prompting "Death to America" protests in Afghanistan, and fresh calls for the timetable for the 2014 withdrawal of American and British forces to be accelerated.

As a commander and trained sniper in a frontline US infantry unit, Sgt Bales was no stranger to combat and the stress it can produce in those who wage it. He had witnessed the bloodiest of the fighting in Iraq in the years after the 2003 invasion, earning the praise of his superiors, and was decorated a dozen times during three tours of duty there.

Then in 2010, towards the end of his third deployment, he suffered a minor traumatic brain injury after the vehicle in which he was travelling rolled over. And last year to his disappointment he was passed over for promotion, adding to money worries back home.

But for Sgt Bales, 38, and his wife Karilyn, there seemed at least one reason for optimism on the horizon. They understood he had served his final tour in a warzone, and that they and their two young children would soon move to a non-combat posting. Instead, he was sent back to the front last December, this time to Afghanistan. The consequences were more dreadful than could have been imagined.

Grievances and pressures

What emerged this weekend is a morality story for a nation whose army has been at war for a decade, and at the centre of it is a soldier who, despite an impressive military record, also had a recent history of trauma, grievances and financial pressures.

Court records show another side to the character of a man who was described by stunned neighbours as a loving father and husband and "life of the party".

In 2002, he underwent an anger management assessment after he was charged with assault. And in 2008, witnesses said that he smelled of alcohol after crashing his car and running off into woods.

At home in Washington state, his wife was struggling with the finances as she raised Quincy, four, and Bobby, three. Only this month, they put their home up for sale as they had fallen behind with their mortgage payments.

Sgt Bales, 38, a member of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, was flown back on Friday evening to the military's highest-security prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where investigators will pore over his military evaluations, mental and physical health records and computer logs as they draw up charges against him.

Work stress and marital strains

An unnamed official briefed US media that Sgt Bales buckled under a combination of work stress, marital strains and alcohol, saying that he had been drinking in violation of military rules.

But the shocking incident raises alarming questions about his emotional and mental stability, and whether he had slipped through the net of care at one of America's biggest bases and the pressures of repeat deployments to combat zones.

John Browne, his lawyer, dismissed reports of domestic problems as "hogwash" but said Sgt Bales had experienced post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his deployments and his head injury in Iraq.

He also had seen one of his fellow soldiers lose his leg in an explosion hours before he allegedly committed the massacre.

Sgt Bales and his wife lived at Lake Tapps in Washington state, about a 20-minute drive east of his base at Lewis-McChord near Tacoma in the Pacific North West.

His home was a modest two-story beige wood-frame house with a small front porch beneath tall fir and cedar evergreens in a neighbourhood popular with military families. But three days before the shooting in Afghanistan, Mrs Bales contacted Philip Rodocker, an estate agent, to say that she wanted to sell their house.

Home 'behind in payments'

The property was listed for $229,000, about a $50,000 loss on what the family paid for it in 2005 and less than they owed the bank.

"She told me she was behind in payments," Mr. Rodocker said. "She said he was on his fourth tour and (the house) was getting kind of old and they needed to stabilise their finances."

The house "looked like it had been really, really neglected", he added.

Mrs Bales and her children were moved into accommodation on the army base last week, to protect her from the inevitable media scrutiny as well as the danger of revenge attacks. Boxes, toys, a sledge and a barbecue grill were piled on the front porch this weekend, collected by Mrs Bales as she prepared for the move.

"We are completely in shock," said Kassie Holland, 27, a neighbour.

"They seemed very happy, he was the life of the party and great with the kids. I can't see how this can have happened."

His commanders also evidently had no doubts about his capabilities. Staff sergeants are the backbone of a fighting unit, providing support to their officers and bolstering morale of the troops.

To qualify as a sniper - a position that all but guarantees a close acquaintance with killing - he underwent and passed routine psychological screening assessments.

Bales' own insights

Sgt Bales offered his own insights on the war in Iraq after he fought in a battle in the city of Najaf in 2007 in which 250 enemy fighters died, in clashes described by some participants as "apocalyptic".

"I've never been more proud to be a part of this unit than that day," he said afterwards in a testimony collected for a military training college.

"We discriminated between the bad guys and the noncombatants and then afterward we ended up helping the people that three or four hours before were trying to kill us.

"I think that's the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy, someone who puts his family in harm's way like that."

Speaking of the intensity of the battle, he added that "the cool part about this was World War II-style. You dug in. Guys were out there digging a fighting position in the ground."

That vivid account is evidently one that the US military would prefer the public no longer to read. The link to the website that carried it was removed last week, but the article was still available in other archives.

Comrades have been quick to come to the support of the soldier they had known before Sunday.

Capt Chris Alexander, his platoon leader in Iraq, said in an interview on Friday that the sergeant "saved many a life" by never letting down his guard during patrols.

"Bales is still, hands down, one of the best soldiers I ever worked with," he said.

"There has to be very severe [post-traumatic stress disorder] involved in this. I just don't want him seen as some psychopath, because he is not."

Two brushes with the law

But public records show two brushes with the law after he moved to Washington. He was ordered by a judge in 2002 to undergo anger-management counselling for an assault case, but no further details of the incident were immediately available.

He was arrested in 2008 after he drove his car off a road and into a tree, then fled the scene. Witnesses told police that he was bleeding, disoriented and smelled of alcohol, but he was not charged with drunk driving.

He was deployed three times to Iraq: between 2003 and 2004 as anti-US resistance erupted; for 15 months between June 2006 and September 2007, at the height of the brutal civil war and the beginning of what became known as the surge; and for a year from August 2009. As well as the head injury in that final tour, his lawyer said that he had also lost part of his foot in a separate incident.

The massacre has focused attention on the care and vetting given to soldiers who have gone through multiple tours and, in Sgt Bales' case, suffered a brain injury on deployment.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord has come under scrutiny after a series of incidents.

Most notably, rogue soldiers from another Stryker brigade formed a "kill unit" and murdered three Afghan civilians in 2010, and the Army recently opened an investigation into complaints that diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder were being changed or dismissed by the base's medical centre.

Repeated deployment pressures

Some veteran groups have argued that the base, which is home to 40,000 soldiers, is unable to handle the pressures of repeated deployments.

In 2010, Sgt Bales was among 18,000 personnel who returned there from war zones over just a few weeks.

However, commanders insisted on Friday that facilities at Lewis-McChord were not overwhelmed.

Why Sgt Bales snapped in the early hours of last Sunday remain unclear for now; officials say he appears to have only vague recollections of the incident.

But as he stands suspected of perhaps the worst single atrocity committed by a US serviceman in the last decades of foreign wars, a recent US military press release about military's "hearts and minds" operations in an Afghan village has a chilling poignancy.

Post by Big Bunny on Mar 23, 2012 19:45:14 GMT -5

French gunman had 'no ties to al-Qaeda'

* From: AFP * March 24, 2012 7:13AM

FRENCH authorities rejected charges that intelligence failures allowed a radical Islamist to kill seven people, insisting there was no evidence he was anything but a lone wolf with no ties to al-Qaeda.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon said security officials had known Mohamed Merah, who died in a hail of police bullets, was a radical Islamist who visited Afghanistan, but said there was no reason to suspect he was planning attacks.

The intelligence services "did their job perfectly well. They identified Mohamed Merah when he made his trips," he told French radio.

Intelligence agents "watched him long enough to come to the conclusion that there was no element, no indication, that this was a dangerous man who would one day pass from words to acts," said Fillon.

The head of France's DCRI domestic intelligence agency, Bernard Squarcini, said there was little more that security services could have done to predict or prevent the killings by Merah, who died in a gunbattle with police after a 32-hour stand-off in the southwestern city of Toulouse.

The 23-year-old Merah, who claimed to be an al Qaeda member who killed to avenge Palestinian children and punish France for sending troops to Afghanistan, did not follow the usual path taken by Islamist extremists, Squarcini told Le Monde newspaper.

"According to statements he made during the siege, he self-radicalized in prison, on his own, reading the Koran," he said. "He said, in any case, everything is in the Koran. So, he was not a member of a network."

Merah was jailed in France at 19 for a series of thefts and violent crimes and spent two years in prison.

He said that when he traveled to Pakistan in 2011 he did not frequent the usual training centers - where spies might have reported his presence - but instead was trained by a single individual, the DRCI chief said.

After a 2010 trip to Afghanistan, French agents investigated Merah but found none of the usual danger signs associated with organized extremism, said Squarcini. "No ideological activism, no visiting mosques," he said.

Fillon and Squarcini's comments came as investigators sought to establish whether Merah had worked alone or with accomplices before he murdered three paratroopers, three Jewish children and a rabbi trainee.

The killings shocked France, which is home to western Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities, and brought the issues of security and integration to the heart of the country's presidential election campaign.

A US intelligence official said that Merah, a French citizen of Algerian origin, had been on America's "no-fly" list that banned him from boarding flights to or from America because he was considered a terror risk.

Police on Friday prolonged the detention of his mother and brother.

The girlfriend of Merah's brother was also kept in detention, a legal source said.

All three were first detained on Wednesday, just as police were surrounding Merah in his Toulouse apartment.

Police and prosecution officials have said that Merah's brother, Abdelkader Merah, is himself a radical Islamist, and that traces of what could be an explosive material were found in his car.

Prosecutors said the first murder in Merah's spree was committed after he contacted his victim, a 30-year-old army officer, using his mother's computer.

FRENCH intelligence agencies were criticised after it was revealed that the Toulouse killer reportedly trained by al-Qaeda had been on a US flight ban list since 2010 and had a brother linked to a group that sent fighters to a jihadist network in Iraq.

Mohammed Merah, who was killed while firing a barrage of bullets at police, was also reported to have forced a teenager to watch videos of al-Qaeda hostage beheadings. The boy's mother claimed that when she filed a legal complaint, Merah attacked her with a sword, shouting ''al-Qaeda'', and put her in hospital for several days. She said police took no action.

Merah, a 23-year-old petty criminal, killed four people at a Jewish school this week after killing three soldiers the week before. His rampages are expected to have a powerful impact on the French presidential election in five weeks.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has promised tough new laws against watching atrocity videos and travelling overseas for terrorist training or indoctrination.

''These crimes were not the work of a madman,'' Mr Sarkozy said. ''A madman is irresponsible. These crimes were the work of a fanatic and a monster.'' He said police were investigating whether Merah had any accomplices.

The European Union's top anti-terrorism expert estimated Europe had about 400 lone-wolf extremists trained by al-Qaeda.

Most were in ''Germany, France, Britain; maybe also Belgium, and in all other EU countries to a much lesser extent'', said the EU's Counter-Terrorism Co-ordinator, Gilles de Kerchove. He said lone operators had become more common because al-Qaeda's structures in Europe had been weakened over the past four years.

Bruno Le Roux, a spokesman for the Socialist Party presidential candidate, Francois Hollande, accused authorities of having failed in their surveillance of Merah.

''In the United States, a commission of inquiry would have been set up without any question to see if there's a problem,'' Mr Le Roux said.

A former Socialist defence and interior minister, Jean-Pierre Chevenement, questioned whether Merah could have acted alone. ''Too many arms, too many trips, too much money.''

An al-Qaeda-linked group called Jund al-Khilafah claimed responsibility for Merah's attacks, saying that its ''Islamic warrior'' had taken revenge for French hostility to Muslims and that Israel's ''crimes will not go unpunished''.

But French officials said they had no reason to focus on him because he had never been known to have links with a violent Islamist group, nor were his trips to Afghanistan or Pakistan with an Islamist network.

The Interior Minister, Claude Gueant, said Merah had been watched for years but had never ''shown any signs of preparing criminal acts''.

But as recently as November Merah had been questioned by the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence. He had said he had been a tourist when he was arrested by Afghan police in 2010.

French authorities had also alerted Spain when Merah was planning to go to the Costa Brava to meet Islamist activists.

Merah's indoctrination is believed to have begun during an 18-month stint in jail, where he tried to commit suicide and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. He was an unemployed panelbeater who grew up on a housing estate in Toulouse and was said to have had convictions for assault or robbery.

Post by Big Bunny on Mar 24, 2012 23:06:08 GMT -5

The brother of an Al Qaeda-inspired gunman who murdered seven people has told police he is "proud" of his sibling's killing spree, according to a police source.

Abdelkader Merah, the elder brother of the 23-year-old Mohamed Merah, who died in a hail of police gunfire on Thursday, has been questioned at France's domestic intelligence hub in Paris after earlier being interrogated at the police barracks in Toulouse.

Police found explosives in a car he owned, according to the public prosecutor leading the case, and he was already known to security services for having helped smuggle jihadist militants into Iraq in 2007, prosecutor Francois Molins said.

Abdelkader and his wife were arrested on Wednesday as negotiators sought their help in trying to persuade Mohamed Merah to turn himself in. Their mother, arrested at the same time, was released on Friday evening, the public prosecutor's office said.

Her lawyer, Jean-Yves Gougnaud, said she told him "she saw nothing coming" and felt guilty for what had happened.

A police source said on Saturday that at a closed hearing in Toulouse, Abdelkader had declared himself "proud" of his brother's killings and admitted helping Mohamed steal the scooter used in all seven murders. He had denied any knowledge of his brother's murderous plans, however, the source added.

Mohamed was killed by a sniper after a gunbattle with police that ended a more than 30-hour siege at his Toulouse apartment, during which he admitted killing three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three soldiers in three separate attacks.

A Colt 45 pistol found in a Renault car was formally identified as the weapon used in the killing spree. The police source also said Abdelkader had acknowledged complicity in the robbery of the scooter his brother used in the three attacks.

DCRI head Bernard Squarcini told Le Monde newspaper on Friday there was no evidence Mohamed Merah belonged to any radical Islamist network and he appeared to have turned fanatic alone.

His brother, and a sister, were known to have studied the Koran in Egypt in 2010 and French police had in the past found links between them and a radical Islamist group based in southern France led by a Syrian-born Frenchman dubbed "The White Emir" by French media because of his fair hair and beard.

Political fallout

President Nicolas Sarkozy met ministers and police chiefs to discuss the consequences of the massacre, which has raised troubling national security questions four weeks ahead of a presidential election.

Mr Sarkozy is facing an uphill re-election battle and his chief intelligence adviser sought to head off media questions about the handling of the affair in the south-west city of Toulouse.

The shootings shifted the focus of political debate away from France's economic difficulties and played to the strengths of the French president as he fights for re-election in a two-round vote in April and May.

Polls show that about two-thirds of voters approved of his handling of the Toulouse crisis, which reduced his challengers, chief among them Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande, to the role of bystander.

An opinion poll released on Saturday appeared to contradict the idea that national security had shot to the top of the agenda for voters despite a week when national and international media provided round-the-clock coverage of the killings and the siege that culminated with a shootout and death of Merah.

The Ifop polling agency said 53 per cent of people believed France faced a high risk of terrorist attack. It was the lowest worry score recorded since Ifop started sounding people out on the issue after the September 11 attacks in 2011, when the number who perceived a high risk of terror attack was 78 per cent.

Around 30 people, mostly young girls, held a brief rally in a heavily immigrant district of Toulouse on Saturday in memory of Mohamed Merah, who they said was one of their own regardless of what he had done.

"I think what must have influenced him was those multiple trips [abroad], that he was unable to deal with all that," said one girl, who wore a full-face veil - which is outlawed in public in France - and declined to give her name.

AFGHAN security forces have paraded Taliban militants dressed as women in front of media to show the lengths the insurgents will go to to attack Allied forces.

The militants in drag were among seven men arrested in Mehterlam, Laghman province, east of Kabul, Afghan yesterday intelligence officials said.

Tensions in Afghanistan have increased noticeably in recent weeks since Staff Sergeant Robert Bales allegedly killed eight Afghan adults and nine children after wandering off a US military base in southern Afghanistan.

The disguises show how militants are using increasingly desperate tactics in the war, including the use of children as lookouts and suicide bombers.

Pink is so not my colour. Taliban insurgents were arrested east of Kabul yesterday wearing women's dresses. Picture: AP

Reports emerged from Afghanistan this week that a child suicide bomber was responsible for the attack on Australian Aid worker David Savage.

Mr Savage, 49, a former Australian Federal Police (AFP) officer and peacekeeper, is in Germany in a serious but stable condition after the attack on Tuesday.

The protection of Australian aid workers in Afghanistan will be reviewed after an AusAID adviser was injured in a suicide bombing attack, Defence Minister Stephen Smith says.

The attacks happened near the main Australian base as he returned from a community meeting in the Chora Valley, north of Tarin Kowt.

The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed three NATO soldiers and injured an Afghan National Army soldier.

A Taliban spokesman said the attack was in direct retaliation for the murder of 17 Afghan civilians by US Staff Sergeant Robert Bales two weeks ago, Fairfax reported.

Mr Smith said it was unclear whether a child was responsible for the suicide bombing or if the attack was in retaliation for Bales' attack.

Mr Savage was under force protection provided by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) at the time of the attack.

An automatic review of the arrangements would be undertaken, Mr Smith said.

The defence minister said there would be an exhaustive assessment of the attack to examine if Mr Savage was targeted by the suicide bomber.

The use of children in such matters was "absolutely contemptible", Mr Smith said.

"We've seen in the past Taliban using children of very early ages to engage in such activities and we treat that with nothing but contempt."

The murder spree by Bales was a setback, which coalition forces were still working through, the defence minister said.

Bales was charged with 17 premeditated murders as well as six counts of assault and attempted murder in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province.

The killings - mostly of women and children - are believed to be the deadliest war crime by a NATO soldier during the decade-long conflict and have tested an already tense relationship between Washington and Kabul.

Mr Savage was treated at Tarin Kowt initially before he was transferred to the medical facility at Kandahar for more advanced treatment and then on to Germany.

Post by Big Bunny on Mar 30, 2012 6:25:05 GMT -5

Police in France have arrested 19 suspected Islamists and seized weapons in a series of dawn raids, President Nicolas Sarkozy says.

The raids were in Toulouse, the home of gunman Mohamed Merah, and other cities.

Merah, who killed seven people in three separate attacks, was buried in Toulouse on Thursday after being killed in a shoot-out with police on 22 March.

Police have been hunting possible accomplices but sources said there was no direct link with the raids.

Merah's brother, Abdelkader, has been charged with aiding him and police are hunting a third man said to be involved in the theft of a scooter that Merah used in all the killings.

Mr Sarkozy told Europe 1 radio after Friday's raids: "It's our duty to guarantee the security of the French people. We have no choice. It's absolutely indispensable."

Forsane Alizza

The raids were carried out by the domestic intelligence agency, the DCRI, with the help of the elite Raid police commando group, Agence France-Presse news agency reports.

Several of the raids were in Toulouse, particularly the Mirail quarter, sources told AFP.

But there were also raids in Nantes, which is believed to be a centre for the Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride) group, to which Merah had been linked by some French media.

It is a Salafist group that was dissolved by the interior ministry in an earlier investigation.

Other arrests took place in Lyon, Marseille, Paris, Nice and Le Mans.

Police sources told AFP that some weapons had been seized, including at least one Kalashnikov rifle.

After Merah's killings, President Sarkozy ordered police to evaluate the level of danger posed by those known to sympathise with radical Islamists.

Mr Sarkozy told Europe 1 on Friday that arrests of suspected radical Islamists "would continue and that will allow us to expel from our national territory a certain number of people who have no reason to be here".

He added: "What must be understood is that the trauma of Montauban and Toulouse is profound for our country, a little - I don't want to compare the horrors - a little like the trauma that followed in the United States and in New York after the September 11, 2001 attacks."

Mr Sarkozy is in the midst of a presidential election campaign, seeking a second term in office in the polls on 22 April.

An opinion poll late on Wednesday suggested Mr Sarkozy was now ahead of main challenger Francois Hollande in first-round voting intentions - by 30% to 26% - and had narrowed Mr Hollande's lead in the largely expected run-off vote on 6 May.

Merah, 23, was buried at the Cornebarrieu cemetery in Toulouse on Thursday. His body was accompanied by around 15 men, although it was not clear who they were.

Toulouse's mayor had said it was "inappropriate" for Merah to be buried there, but Algeria, where his family is originally from, had refused to accept his body.

Merah died in a police assault on his flat in Toulouse on 22 March after a 32-hour siege. He had killed three soldiers in two separate attacks before shooting dead three children and a teacher at a Jewish school.

Merah is said to have told police he wanted to avenge Palestinian children and to attack the French army because of its foreign interventions.

AnalysisChristian Fraser BBC News, Paris

[glow=red,2]Merah's brother Abdelkader told police that when he helped his brother steal the Yamaha T-Max scooter used in the killings there was another person in the car. His identity has not been revealed.

But on Thursday they discovered a stolen Renault Clio containing parts of the motorbike and the crash helmet used by Merah 80 miles (130km) from the council house in Toulouse where he was shot dead last week.

Another part of the investigation is the USB memory stick that was posted to the al-Jazeera TV channel containing the video he took of the killings. It was dropped in a post box in the Toulouse area on the day the siege of Merah's flat began, which means someone else posted it. If a third man is on the loose, it raises the possibility there is another active terrorist prepared to strike again.[/glow]

Post by Big Bunny on Apr 1, 2012 16:56:14 GMT -5

THE 17 people held by French police, including Sydney man Willie Brigitte, will remain in custody for another day.

Friday's arrests were made in connection with a probe into an alleged terror plot and under French anti-terror laws the suspects can be held without charge until tomorrow.

The head of France's Central Directorate for Domestic Intelligence (DCRI), Bernard Squarcini, said yesterday that those arrested were "French nationals" involved in "collective war-like training, linked to a violent, religious indoctrination."

Brigitte, who was extradited to France nine years ago to face trial for charges related to his membership of a terror cell which planned to bomb the Lucas Heights nuclear plant, was detained by French police on Friday in Asnieres, north of Paris

Some of the other people arrested belonged to a suspected extremist group called Forsane Alizza, Mr Squarcini said, and had been involved in paintball gun games.

The arrests took place in several cities, including Toulouse, where extremist gunman Mohamed Merah was shot dead by police last week after a series of cold-blooded shootings that left seven dead, including three Jewish children.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said the arrests were not directly linked to the Merah case, but he has called on police to increase its surveillance of "radical Islam" in what the opposition has described as a vote-catching move less than a month ahead of a presidential election.

Socialist Michel Sapin admitted that the arrests were "legitimate" but said that the presence of television news cameras during the roundup was not, after the footage was beamed into French homes.

"The presence of cameras at that moment to film the scene so that it can then be reproduced and comment on is not legitimate," Mr Sapin told Radio J.

Post by Big Bunny on Apr 17, 2012 7:04:05 GMT -5

Taliban stir the watersDylan WelchApril 17, 2012

Spring offensive ... Afghan policemen and officials stand next to the wreckage of a car used in a suicide attack in Kabul yesterday. Taliban militants launched an attacks on the capital in which a total of 47 people were killed and some 65 wounded. Photo: AFP

THE Australian major general who served as coalition chief of operations in Iraq in 2004-05, Jim Molan, said the Taliban's attacks in Kabul were designed to influence public opinion before next month's NATO summit in Chicago.

''They are doing this to continue to have Americans believe that the war is unwinnable,'' the now retired major general said.

It was recently announced it will cost the international community $4.1 billion a year after 2014 to support the nascent Afghan army and national police.Advertisement: Story continues below

''When in Chicago [at the NATO summit] they consider how much they're going to pay, and at what level they will keep the Afghan National Security Forces, then these attacks will impact - because if you believe the war is unwinnable then why waste even $4 billion.''

And as the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, made clear major Australian combat operations in Afghanistan would end next year, the man who commanded Australian troops in Afghanistan in 2010, Major-General John Cantwell, expressed his doubt about the war.

Talking on Four Corners General Cantwell, who retired this year, acknowledged that ultimately Australia had become embroiled in the decade-long war because Australia was ''supporting an alliance with the United States''. He admitted he had struggled with whether Australian involvement was worth the cost in blood.

Post by Big Bunny on Apr 19, 2012 4:03:26 GMT -5

Graphic photos of American soldiers posing with the bodies of suspected Taliban suicide bombers have drawn Australian Government condemnation and fury from the Obama administration.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith said the graphic pictures in the Los Angeles Times - showing grinning soldiers posing with severed hands and disembodied legs - were "terrible" and "contemptible."

"They don't reflect the values and the virtues of the United States or NATO or the international security assistance force for what we are trying to do in Afghanistan," he said.

"There is no point gilding the lily, there is no point pretend(ing) it is not a setback."

The LA Times photos represent the latest in a series of damaging incidents involving American troops since the start of the year.

The decision to publish the photos, provided by an anonymous soldier, also set off a debate about whether the newspaper had acted responsibly.

Images published on the Times' website showed one soldier purportedly with a corpse's hand on his shoulder and others holding the severed legs of a suicide bomber.

The Pentagon had asked the newspaper not to publish, fearing a backlash against troops.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said the actions of the soldiers were abhorrent and he feared what could occur as a result.

"I know that war is ugly and it's violent and I know that young people sometimes caught up in the moment make some very foolish decisions," he said.

"I am not excusing that but neither do I want these images to bring further injury to our people or to our relationship with the Afghan people. We had urged the LA Times not to run those photos and the reason for that is those kinds of photos are used by the enemy."

"The conduct depicted in those photographs is reprehensible and does not in any way represent the high standards of the US military," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

"The President certainly shares in the Defense Secretary's opinion that this should be investigated and those held responsible will be held accountable."

Mr Carney said he did not know if Mr Obama had seen the photos. He repeated the Pentagon's argument that the newspaper should not have published the photos.

LA Times editor Davan Maharaj said, "After careful consideration, we decided that publishing a small but representative selection of the photos would fulfill our obligation to readers to report vigorously and impartially on all aspects of the American mission in Afghanistan, including the allegation that the images reflect a breakdown in unit discipline that was endangering US troops."

LATimes.com also published a report on reaction from readers, much of it angry.

The soldier who provided the Times with a series of 18 photos of soldiers posing with corpses did so on condition of anonymity. He served in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne's 4th Brigade Combat Team. He said the photos pointed to a breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops.

The photos were taken during a year-long deployment of the 3500-member brigade, which lost 35 men during that time, according to icasualties.org, a website that tracks casualties. At least 23 were killed by homemade bombs or suicide bombers.

Despite some revulsion, reaction in Afghanistan was muted because many ordinary Afghans have no internet access. Evening TV bulletins did not show the photos.

Suicide bombers, who cause hundreds of Afghan civilian deaths every year, are widely despised. Even so, the taboo against desecration of the dead is strong in this religiously conservative country.

"Always it is a matter of disrespect," said Farhad Mohammad, a merchant in the southern city of Kandahar.

"We condemn Americans posing with dead bodies or body parts," said Najla Dehqan Nezhad, a member of parliament from the western province of Herat.

"The actions of the individuals photographed do not represent the policies" of the NATO force or the US military, read a statement by US Marine Corps General John R. Allen, the commander of Western forces,in cluding Australian troops, in Afghanistan. He said the behavior was "entirely inconsistent" with the values of the US and its military coalition partners, and an investigation was under way.

The US ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan C. Crocker, issued a similar condemnation. "Such actions are morally repugnant," he said.

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is expected to make a statement.

The US army has launched a criminal investigation.

This is the latest in a series of damaging incidents and disclosures involving American troops in Afghanistan, which have come in close succession since the start of the year. Video that surfaced in January showed US troops urinating on the bodies of Taliban combatants.

The following month saw the burning of Korans at an American-run military base, and in March, a US Army sergeant was charged in a deadly shooting rampage outside his base in Kandahar province, more than half of whose 17 victims were children.

The Koran-burning, which American officials said was inadvertent, triggered nearly a week of deadly riots that broke out hours after the action came to light, leaving more than 30 people dead, including four US service members.

Last month, the US military community were devastated when a sergeant serving in Afghanistan allegedly killed 17 Afghan civilians in a night-time rampage.

The latest scandal comes as ISAF coalition partners, including Australia, announce they will begin drawing down troops in the war-torn country a full year earlier than previously said.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard confirmed this week that Australia's combat and training operations will finish by the end of 2013, and that Australia strongly backed reconciliation talks involving the Taliban.

Ms Gillard said Australia's withdrawal will take 12 to 18 months from this point, with the bulk of the troops to come home at the end of the transition period.